The 2012 Formula One Season

Jarno was an excellent qualifier and a superb defender. Those two combined into the production of the legendary "Trulli train". It might not be pretty but it is a testament to a driver on a regular basis extracting more out a car than it wants to offer. I never really liked Jarno, but I still rate him high.... this is another train-wreck Flavio left in his wake.

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

chet Wrote:
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> The guy was on top of Alonso till he
> knew he was out for 2005.

Not really. Alonso annihilated him at Melbourne, Indianapolis and Magny Cours, and during the first half of 2004 Alonso went through a dip in form where he struggled for pace and made a string of uncharacteristic mistakes; this happened to coincide with a period where Trulli was in the form of his career. So Trulli appeared to have gotten the upper hand. But when Alonso was on fire - like at Melbourne and in France - Trulli still had no answer for him.

It's a shame he's been booted out of a drive which he(and a lot of us) thought he'd secured for 2012, but still, he's had a good long career with plenty of opportunities in good cars, so I don't think he's missed the bus and been a wasted talent at all. I've never liked the guy, but I definitely admit that he was pretty unique in his driving style, and mindblowingly quick when he was really hooked up.

Oh, and his reaction to Briatore dumping him for 2005 was epic. Best public strop ever. :D

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Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 02/19/2012 07:03AM by EC83.

Briatore could be an arsehole when it came to drivers though. Obviously he worshiped the ground that Schumacher and Alonso walked on... But he could be a complete cock to the likes of Johnny Herbert, Alex Wurz and Jarno Trulli. All decent enough drivers who looked worse than they were for long periods at the "Enstone" team.

Herbert had inequal treatment at Benetton, in which Schumacher had full access to all telemetry but Herbert's was restricted.

Trulli's downfall at Renault corespondent with that infamous owning of him by Barrichello at the last corner at Magny Cours, Briatore was suitably unimpressed and ever since then Trulli's form in the Renault disappeared.

Even Nelsinho Piquet as much a wretch he is, was mistreated. Heck! He was instructed to crash on purpose!

Having said all this, it may not be all Briatore... The team in general has a history of being unessacarily difficult on drivers.

Yes, well. It's gone now.

J i m Wrote:
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> Briatore could be an arsehole when it came to
> drivers though.

I can think of no times when he wasn't an arsehole towards his drivers. The only reason he treated Schumacher and Alonso (slightly) differently was because he saw their usefulness to him as exceptional drivers, in bringing his team success and bringing him glory and the credit for it. Basically, he saw them as very lucrative business deals, so being "nice" to them(or at least appearing to be) was worthwhile. Nurture your stock and invest some time and effort in it for a few years, then reap the rewards later - which he did both times. Once both drivers had escaped from his team and got themselves drives elsewhere, he spoke as harshly of them as he did of any of the others.

> Even Nelsinho Piquet as much a wretch he is, was
> mistreated. Heck! He was instructed to crash on
> purpose!

This is why, in spite of his faults and wrongdoings, I have a bit of a soft spot for Piquet Jr. He might be remembered for all the wrong reasons as an F1 driver, but he managed to get one of the worst(arguably the worst) dirtbags in the sport's history booted out of F1. I can think of no team boss more corrupt, dishonest or dislikeable than Flavio was, and I'm glad it finally came back to bite him on his fat ass in the end.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/20/2012 04:01AM by EC83.

LOL, you only have to read the first few lines of his Wikipedia page to wonder why the @#$%& he was allowed to be involved in F1 to begin with:

"Flavio Briatore (born 12 April 1950) is an Italian businessman. He started his career as a restaurant manager and insurance salesman in Italy. Convicted in Italy on several fraud charges in the 1980s, he set up a number of successful Benetton franchises as a fugitive in the Virgin Islands and the United States."

Words which stick out: convict, fugitive, salesman, fraud, Italian. Small wonder he got his hands caught in the cookie jar eventually, the greedy glut-gut couldn't help himself!





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/19/2012 11:38PM by loque.

And as a finishing touch to his punishment for Crashgate, he should've been forced to put that disgusting photo on his CV for any future jobs/positions he applied for. That would've been the cherry.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/20/2012 04:12AM by EC83.

Briatore doesn't apply for jobs. He's his own boss and gets approached for jobs.

But yeah that photo has given me eye cancer.

surprisingly small nipples for an overweight person.


Jenson drives it like he owns it; Lewis drives it like he stole it

Jesus...that's a hideous sight.

Quote
danm
surprisingly small nipples for an overweight person.

It's not the only small thing...

...the towel's not big enough either.

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GPGSL: S6 - TafuroGP Tester (14th) /// S7 - ART Tester (6th) /// S8 - Demon Driver (13th) /// S9 - Demon/Snake Driver (13th) /// S10 - Snake Driver (???) ///]
"My ambition is handicapped by laziness" - Charles Bukowski

Stepped Nose for GP4.

I was surprised how well this turned out (only changed the car number position and modified the shape so it's like the 2012 nose).



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/11/2012 05:52PM by alexf1man.

Car art added to P1!!! (Murussia n/a yet)

Marussia F1 team car art added!

I am so let down by Caterham this year, they had all winter testing etc and yet have made very little in terms of moving up the grid.

The other 2 teams behind them done no testing at all and are not that far behind them.

I know F1 is tough but come on, they keep talking themselves up and are making little progress.

Flavio Briatore is a, in kindergarden terms, a bad man.

But to give him SOME credit, he did launch the careers of Mark Webber (he was his manager until 2009 I think) and Fernando Alonso. But, then again, they both started their careers with Minardi. It was, in basic terms, only Alonso AND Schumacher that he developed into key winners, and as I can remember, he's the reason why Renault are supplying engines to Red Bull since 2007. But still, the guy is a stupid egotist. A lot of guys could've been stars, but either narrowly escaped or their careers died because of him. Kovalainen narrowly got through. He went to McLaren for two seasons and won a race. Ok, so he's in a Caterham now but, he's still doing very well. Unfortunetly, Trulli, Fisichella, Piquet Jr, Herbert etc, etc. All got caught and their careers died. Sure, Fisi got most of his wins at Renault, but because of Alonso, we never could see what he could do. During the late 90's, he could've shown Schumi up. Gehard Berger, Jean Alesi, Alexander Wurz etc, etc. could easily smacked Hill, Villeneuve, Schumacher and the rest around, but Briatore just sulked and cried cause Schumi went to Ferrari. He waited till Alonso came, and by that time, Berger, Alesi and Wurz were out retired or doing sport car series (ever wondered why Wurz can run consistantly when in sports cars, I think winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans or coming close, and why in F1 he couldn't).

I think it's safe to say that, thanks to the quick minded Nelson Piquet Jr, Briatore was finally brought down and the injustice of all of his politics could finally enjoy themselves.

[www.bbc.co.uk]

Alonso on "trusting the FIA". I don't think we'll be going to Bahrain.


I must say... I've grown to really like Fernando Alonso. He's been a bit of a whiney bitch in the past but the last few years ... especially when talking to the media he is very calm, level headed and mature.

Bloody hell! I keep on forgetting about that picture of Britore.. Makes my eyes bleed everytime I open this thread and scroll down the page. #need to get thread onto next page.

loque Wrote:
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> I must say... I've grown to really like Fernando
> Alonso. He's been a bit of a whiney bitch in the
> past but the last few years ... especially when
> talking to the media he is very calm, level headed
> and mature.

Same here. I've been a pretty huge fan of him since the second half of 2008 and his awe-inspiring drives in the Renault, but off-track I've also liked him for roughly the same amount of time. I didn't like him during his Championship years with Renault and to an extent McLaren, when he came across as very moody and petulant and a complete diva at times, although as we soon knew he was more than justified in the way he reacted to events at McLaren. Looking back I think 2007 has done him more good than anything else, and he's become a much more level-headed and mature driver(and person) since that bitch of a season he had dealing with Ron Dennis. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and I think Fernando is the one who's ultimately come up smelling of roses after 2007 - and deservedly so too.

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Well I'm not sure about that, you just need to look at his behaviour at Hockenheim and Abu Dhabi 2010 to show that he still has the elements of petulance there.

I think Alonso is, by all accounts, a pretty natural and friendly guy off the track, and I respect his driving immensely, but I can't bring myself to like his paddock politics, psychological games, petulance etc. As a side note, since he joined Twitter a few weeks ago, he's been quite excellent as well actually, and it does seem to support the anecdotes that he's a pretty relaxed sort of guy.

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X (@ed24f1)

Abu Dhabi was just frustrating. In the cold light of day, he'll have known Petrov did no wrong, but I think we all would have been the same in such a situation. You're so pumped up inside the car at such a crucual stage that it's natural that emotions boil over occasionally - it's which actions you take when they do which separates the great from the good, and the fact that Alonso's were only vocal rather than creaming into the side of Petrov ought to place him firmly in the former category. Many of his contemporaries would have taken at least one of them out of the race, either deliberately or through sheer desperation. We'll have all been in similar (race, never mind championship) positions in racing sims, which have far less pressure associated - how did you cope?

As for Hockenheim, Alonso is a mentally strong driver and Massa a mentally weak one. I'm not saying Ferrari were right (they certainly weren't), but Alonso had dominated Massa up until that point and continued to do so afterwards. He's clearly going to ask for Massa to be moved aside - that Ferrari management complied is the real issue, and it's a very modern Ferrari thing to do. That and the fact that Massa, the faster driver on the day, allowed himself to be caught in a comfortable position by a relatively struggling Alonso.

I'm generally very impartial in F1, but I too have found myself to be an Alonso fan. I liked the fact that he broke Schumacher's dominance, but then I guess most of us did, just for a change, and from the outset I hated the preferential treatment and support that Hamilton enjoyed at McLaren (something that seemed very much not to be the case on these forums until after Alonso had long left McLaren and 2009 had started in the farce that it did for Hamilton). But what really does it for me is his 100% every single lap. It's a Mansell-like attitude with the talent of a Raikkonen. I can't help but like a guy that never, ever gives up, and there's only been a handful of them throughout the 70 years of F1, and I genuinely don't even think any of the previous ones have been as committed as constantly as Alonso, Senna and Fangio included.

I know his Singapore victory was only made possible by Piquet's crash, but he was a joy to watch in practice and qualifying and, somewhat tainted, in the race too. His weekend up until his gearbox was truly something to behold.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/20/2012 09:48PM by gav.